Magnus Johnsson

About

Magnus Johnsson is a robotics and cognitive science researcher whose work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, haptic perception, and bio-inspired computing. Based at Lund University Cognitive Science (LUCS), Johnsson has dedicated much of his career to understanding and replicating the sense of touch in robotic systems, a challenging and underexplored frontier in robotics research. His most significant contributions center on the development of the LUCS Haptic Hand series — a progression of anthropomorphic robotic hands designed to model human neurophysiology computationally. Using self-organizing maps (SOMs) and tensor product representations, Johnsson pioneered systems capable of extracting meaningful features from haptic and proprioceptive sensory data, earning him over 34 citations for his landmark 2011 review alone. His neural network models of haptic shape perception (36 citations) further demonstrate his ability to bridge neuroscience and engineering. Beyond touch, Johnsson developed Ikaros, a cognitive modeling framework for robots that has garnered 41 citations — his most influential work — and explored motion estimation using growing neural gas techniques. With a body of work accumulating over 200 citations, Johnsson remains an important voice in bio-inspired robotics and embodied artificial cognition.

Research Focus

Key Achievements

Top Papers

1. 1
   Ikaros: Building cognitive models for robots

   41 citations · 2009
2. 2
   Neural network models of haptic shape perception

   36 citations · 2007
3. 3
   Sense of Touch in Robots With Self-Organizing Maps

   34 citations · 2011
4. 4
   Using GNG to improve 3D feature extraction—Application to 6DoF egomotion

   25 citations · 2012
5. 5
   Experiments with Proprioception in a Self-Organizing System for Haptic Perception

   25 citations · 2007
6. 6
   Experiments with artificial haptic perception in a robotic hand

   17 citations · 2006
7. 7
   A Haptic System for the Lucs Haptic Hand I

   13 citations · 2005
8. 8
   LUCS Haptic Hand II

   10 citations · 2006
9. 9
   Haptic Perception with a Robotic Hand

   9 citations · 2006
10. 10
    Experiments with Haptic Perception in a Robotic Hand

    8 citations · 2005

Key Collaborators

Contact & Links